In the last post, I explained a few of the great benefits of setting up a podcasts for church websites. Now for the process of beginning to pull it off.

Recording Sermons - The manner of recording will have a lot to do with the sound system that you are using at your church. If there is not already a built-in recording mechanism in your sound system, you will want to connect your computer and record the sermon using software such as Audacity or Garage Band. Once you have the audio file on your computer, you will be able to burn the file to CDs. To do this you will want to use the “Export as WAV” or “Export as AIFF” command to save your recording in a sound file.

Shrinking Sermons - The WAV and AAIF files will be large files that are CD quality. Sometimes people will unknowingly add these CD quality files to their church websites. Sometimes these files can be 50MB or more for the 30-45 minute sermon. You may have experienced this in the past when you go to a church website and click to play or download a sermon… 10 minutes later, the file is ready. Most people don't want to wait that long so you will either have to convince your preacher to shorten the sermon length to about 5 minutes or simply reduce the bit rate of the audio file to make it web-ready.

If your Audio file is merely spoken word (as opposed to music) you can reduce the bit rate to 32kbps (kilobits per second) without compromising much quality. Some have even said that you can take the file down to 16kbps but in my experience, this can add a bit too much static to the sermon. If you are using Audacity or Garage Band, you will be able to reduce the bit rate right from the interface and export the file as am mp3. If you already have a large audio file and you would like to simply reduce the bit rate to make a web-ready smaller file, one easy and free way to pull this off is through iTunes.

Here are the steps to make it happen:

1. Open iTunes preferences (file or iTunes > preferences)
    
2. Choose the General Tab then click Import Settings.
    
3. Set Import Using to "mp3 Encoder"
    
4. Set Setting to "Custom"
    
5. Set Stereo Bit Rate to "32kbps" and click OK (twice)
    
6. Find the audio file in your iTunes music library.
    
7. Right click on it and choose "Create mp3 Version" - This will create a copy of your file with the smaller bit rate that you can then upload to your website.

Using this method you will be able to reduce the file size of a 30 minute sermon down to about 6MB - 8MB. Once you have done this, you are ready to upload the file to the web so that you can drop it on your church website. More on where to store this file for free in part 3.
 

When I was in college, I went to a local church with fantastic teaching. At the back of the sanctuary, there was a audio cassette rack where you could pick up a copy of a previous sermon for a one-dollar donation. I loved this cassette rack. I loved that if I had to miss a week of church I could grab the cassette from the rack and play it in my car on the way home. I loved that if there was a sermon that I thought a friend or family member would especially enjoy that I could grab a copy of it and hand it to them.

The days of the audio cassette are over (in most places, I'm assuming.) Most churches made the jump to CDs several years ago and then to the internet. With the technologies available today, sharing a sermon with those you love is easier than ever.

If your church is not already recording and sharing your sermons through your church website, here are four quick reasons that you should start right away:

1. It's a helpful way to archive sermons - I'm going to teach a 3 week series on Luke 15 this coming summer as our pastor will be on Sabbatical. I know that our church did a series on Luke several years ago and instead of simply wondering what the focus on the series was, I can simply listen to it. Brilliant.
    
2. It's an easy way to make a sermon available to a church member who had to miss the worship service for some reason - My wife and I have three kids under the age of 5.